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External Wireless Drivers and Kernel 2.6.22

With 2.6.22 wireless drivers got broken again. They need both a driver patch and an Ebuild CONFIG_CHECK update. The CONFIG_CHECK variable is used to check for a configuration option in the kernel. Previously wireless users had to enable

That option then enabled the hidden option WIRELESS_EXT. Now with 2.6.22 you need to enable that separately:

Symbol: WIRELESS_EXT [=y]
Prompt: Wireless extensions
Defined at net/wireless/Kconfig:4
Depends on: NET && !S390
Location:
-> Networking
-> Networking support (NET [=y])
-> Wireless
Not yet patched drivers
Drivers need updates for 2.6.22 and many upstream driver developers do not release prior to the upstream kernel or shortly after. That is why we need patches to add them to the Ebuilds. If you have such a non working ebuild please get a patch to me through bugs.gentoo.org and assign it to mobile.

mac80211
For some drivers that do not work in kernel 2.6.22 you have the option to use mac80211, you can find it in the sunrise overlay currently:emerge -va layman
echo "source /usr/portage/local/layman/make.conf" >> /etc/make.conf
layman -f -a sunrise

Then depending on the driver you need:emerge rt2x00-git oremerge iwlwifi

You do not need to enable mac80211 in the kernel, because it will use the external package provided by Intel.